Cyberattack Disrupts Printing of Major Newspapers

The Los Angeles Times says an unusual cyberattack that disrupted its printing operations and those at newspapers in San Diego and Florida the weekend of Dec 28 came from outside the United States, but it stopped short of accusing a specific foreign government. Computer malware attacks on infrastructure, while relatively rare, are hardly new: Russia has been credibly accused of shutting down power grids in Ukraine and a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia, Iran crippled a casino in Las Vegas, and the United States and Israel attacked a nuclear enrichment plant in Iran. But this would be the first known attack on major newspaper printing operations, and if politically motivated, it would define new territory in recent attacks on the media.

The malware was focused on the networks used by Tribune Publishing, which until recently owned The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune. The two papers still share their former parent company’s printing networks. The Los Angeles Times said the attack also affected the Dec 29 distribution of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which share use of a large printing plant in Los Angeles for their West Coast editions. Both appear to have been collateral damage; there was no evidence that they were hit by the same malware aimed at the Tribune company. The online editions of the news organizations were not affected, and Tribune Publishing said no data about its subscribers was compromised.